Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-fifth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic has continued his quest for the ultimate pew, with updates to the Auto-turrets Anti-Air gun effects, and scripting work on Vertical Launch System missiles. Lorenzo also got some work on a new capital ship. First, we have the updates to the Anti-air guns demoed last week. Last week was all about making the projectiles move and fire from the barrel, so the effects dropped in were simple particle emitters that honestly didn't look that good. So Idyllic took some time to upgrade the effects. Coming to you in glorious 60 fps to capture all the visuals, are two short videos showing the anti-air turret attached to a vehicle. The effects will work very similar in space, just scaled down a bit and without the gravity component. Now the bullets look like they're moving as fast as they're actually moving. Much better in my opinion. Up next on his list of weapons needed for the Capital Update were the VLS missiles. This 'turret' doesn't rotate or aim at your target, instead, missiles are fired in an arc away from the ship then guided towards the target. We are planning on several different types of missiles, from simple point-and-click unguided missiles that are cheap and effective for stationary or large targets, to a guided missile variant that's a bit more expensive, but better for chasing down those elusive targets, like fighters. The third type would be a bit more specialized - firing a volley of missiles to bombard a general area. Finding its best use in planetary combat against widespread or stationary targets, launching a volley would significantly lengthen reload times, but if you hit your mark you should be fine. Featuring opening doors, 8 missile loadout, and a firmly mounted launch platform, your fleets will be able to rain destruction on all those who oppose you. Along with the pretty stuff, there was some important coding on the rest of the update going on behind the scenes. Adding in states for planned and future features, adding support for the new missile turrets that have a slightly different format to Lorenzo has been hard at work on the newest addition to our growing fleet of widely-varying Capital Ships. While not quite to the christening stage, the results of his efforts are looking quite good. We can't wait to see this ship cruising through the stars. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will there be a single non-PVP zone, or several smaller ones scattered throughout the galaxy? A1: In the past we've mentioned some safe zones for new players to get accustomed to the game without worrying about factions claiming their cargo or pirates stealing it. There will be several 'systems' that are not marked on the current map scattered around the galaxy just for this purpose, though trading exclusively in these systems won't be all that profitable. Q2: Will there be stations designed for combat, or just the 4 supply types in the Stations video? A2: We have to walk a fine line between automating stations to the point that they become the best weapon, and their intended use as a supply point that has to be protected. If you're looking for a structure to fortify a location, the military outpost would be your best bet - smaller than the giant supply stations, and more easily defended. Q3: Will faction devs that submit ships and weapons be able to write lore that appears in a description panel when purchasing the items? A3: Definitely. If the developer puts the effort in to deepen the lore of both their work and RoVerse, we'll do our best to include in in-game. Not everyone has time to go look at the wiki. There will of course be moderation of both the designs and the lore. Q4: Will ship hitboxes be cubes, or will it more closely follow the shape of our ships? A4: The Dogfight alpha uses a standard ship, and all the planned fighters were smaller than one cubic stud, so simplifying their hitbox to a cube was efficient and simple. Since then, we've been updating our work to take into account different shapes and sizes, most notably on the capital ships where tiny fighters will be flying up and around them. With the eventual meshing process, we should be able to reduce detail slightly to create a mostly accurate hitbox for all types of ships. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-fourth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. The end of the school year has finally come, meaning our Devs will now have much more time to devote to RoVerse Development. Leading the team this week is Idyllic, with advancements in the turret operation systems. Taking community feedback from a gif we posted a few weeks back, he has tweaked the first person turret movement to track the mouse with better accuracy than before, most notably a smaller deadzone. The initial iteration had a mostly uncontrollable deadzone, making aiming harder than it should be. With the new system, shooting down invading fleets of fighters should be easier than ever. Also notable in the gif above, though maybe a bit hard to see, is the alternating of barrels. Since we've taken on the task of allowing factions to build their own turrets, supporting a wide variety of numbers of barrels in exotic locations is an important feature, that not only makes the system more flexible, but better looking too. As long as faction developers follow the correct format (to be released later) when designing and building their turrets, we should be able to support as many creative designs as they can come up with. A discussion about ground base buildings has also come up. Some of the prototypes from quite a while ago were very small structures that you could theoretically build anywhere, but were more suited to a 'camp' than a ground base. Bases are intended to fill the middle ground between temporary structures and cities, much like modular outposts in space are a middle ground between ships and faction stations. If a subfaction was to set up their Headquarters on a planets surface, the structure should be comparable in size and usefulness to those set up by space-bound subfactions, right? With this in mind, Idyllic has been developing a new prototype of base structures at a larger scale. Seen above, these buildings aren't quite the size of a cities' towering skyscrapers, nor are they the size of a vehicle garage. Perhaps we'll support small, medium, and large variants, to better fit different uses. While we continue to work on this slight change in direction for ground bases, we will be making sure that other base buildings, like hangars and garages are at a functional size for their use, and that they won't cost more resources to build than they will be worth. Any feedback the community has, can be directed to Idyllic in the Discord. Lordrex took a week's vacation, but I'm sure the work he has been doing to the lobby was on his mind while he traveled. Stratiz had some Computer Science Exams to study for, we hope he does well. Airwarfare has continued to work on the gravity system, working out some control bugs that occur under very specific circumstances, but we believe he'll figure them all out eventually. It's been another short week with tests and other important things to do, but that will definitely improve in the coming weeks. We wish those of you with tests the best of luck, and we'll see you around! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: How will flagships work? A1: A special ship only creatable and flyable by a faction leader or other high ranking member of a faction is an important feature on our list. If anybody could build any ship, it would be utter chaos. We should be able to lock certain submitted ships to specific factions, as well as specific ranks in groups, that doesn't seem too complicated. Q2: Will camera turning on fighters be improved? A2: We're sort of attached to the camera system that fighters currently use - its a balance between complete freecam, that takes you out of the ship altogether, and a locked first person camera that doesn't let you turn at all. This blended, custom version puts you in third person, but you are still tied to the direction your ship is facing. We are working on improving the radar and tracking systems, as well as a damage indicator system that can give you a general direction for incoming fire, but I don't think we'll change to a free camera for fighters - Capitals with their more limited maneuverability are the perfect candidate for something like that. Q3: How will group applications work? Can I reject members? A3: Accepting recruits into your faction should be a pretty similar process to accepting members on Roblox groups - if you want to be exclusive you set it to manual approval, and they can send you an application, or set the default rank to ensign or citizen, and don't give them any permissions. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-third issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. With end-of-semester tests wrapping up, our devs are back at work on RoVerse, with Idyllic pushing Capital scripting further with turret features, and a new team member has taken on the challenge of planetary character gravity, and some progress on several other scripting fronts. First up is Idyllic's Capitals, which this week received a vital update in the form of weapon firing. You can't have spaceship battles without lasers firing off everywhere, so he's been working on scripting how the cool turrets will actually fire projectiles or energy bursts at your enemies. Two different turret types have been his major focus this week - a laser turret and an autoturret fire two of the main projectile types, and have different settings for rate of fire and range, and so are a good benchmark to compare. After some fun with gravity, Idyllic set to tweaking values to match what we want from each weapon type. The autoturret class of weapons fires physical light projectiles extremely efficiently at the cost of a low resulting damage to other ships. Great for finishing off hard to hit targets with low armor plating (fighters) a few of these in every ship complement is a must. Next up will be the more exotic turret types - missile launchers and plasma turrets, before finishing off with conventional and kinetic turrets. We can't wait to see further progress. We have a new member on our team who has valiantly taken on the task of planetary gravity scripts for characters. Many of you may remember the vehicle gravity demos that had excellent results, but when it came to the player, it wasn't as simple. Humanoids are hard-coded to want to stay upright - the same actions and reactions that make you stand up after tripping or getting hit with a giant block are working against us in our pursuit of round planets. But there is hope. A few of you might know about Blobbyblobs planetary gravity freemodel - though outdated, as a concept for smooth and nearly flawless character movement on spherical objects is unmatched - proof that round planets with a nearly original character model are entirely possible. In just a few short hours, airwarfare went from completely lost to a workable prototype. Where Blobby's scripts didn't work with R15, ours now do. And scaling the character is just a small step beyond that. Exciting work! Stratiz has continued his work on a more-complex-than-normal NPC system, so that these large stations factions will be building can be full of life and activity (based on the success of the faction hosting it) rather than a cold lifeless showcase. While he doesn't have any gifs of brain-dead automatons wandering around just yet, we're sure he'll have some great work to show in the coming weeks. Lordrex has dove into a rewrite of the original Lobby system, updating old scripts to function with our backend database, pulling and pushing the data it needs and collects properly; eliminating old features that have been edited or improved, and a few that have been removed since the first few scripters placed down the first lines of code all those weeks ago. The work of the ancients may be impressive, but a few updates here and there are necessary. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: What will happen when two nearby colonies expand at each other and meet? A1: With the procedural generation system expanding cities outward wherever there's room, two cities are bound to overlap. When this happens, the two cities should continue to expand in other areas, eventually forming a line between the two, similarly to how it works in real life. Its possible we may allow two cities to merge at some point in the future, like a real-life city would annex its neighbors to expand, but we'd need a good reason to. Q2: Will factions have a 'wallet' to purchase faction ships with, or will it be up to administrative players in the faction to hold onto a factions wealth? A2: Many of you might have heard of the horrors of EVE corporations being swindled by an untrustworthy administrator, and I'm not too sure the members of Roblox are either. With money coming in from territories and taxes, a faction bank account would balance the effort of administration with ease of play that should be the main focus. We want faction leaders planning battle strategy, not tied up keeping track of what money is where. Q3: Will there be safe places for neutral and beginning players to mine and practice? A3: We intend to create a few neutral systems that are not included in the faction conflict map where people don't have to worry about getting attacked by a war-bound faction. More on this to come at a later date. Q4: Will resources regenerate? A4: Definitely. While minecraft can get away with nonregenerating ores because the worlds are infinite, the planned systems we have are large, but finite. Resources should regenerate over a fairly long period of time, with considerations for rarity as well. Though now that I think about it, factions scrambling for limited resources sounds like it'd be fun to try at least once - maybe to stir things up if they go stale. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-second issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, most of our devs were occupied by finals as the school year is wrapping up, so this week we'll be doing something a bit different. We've gone back through the community discord channel as far as we dared to gather some of the most impressive and inspiring works by members of the community with the intent to join RoVerse as a Faction or subfaction. Important to the development process is the use of concept art. In the discord we have seen hundreds of images of sci fi ships and mechs and tanks, all really cool designs that we hope someone attempts to make their own. Google image search is a surprisingly good resource when it comes to finding cool things to build. While we don't recommend directly copying the images from concept art, using pieces, or combining different parts, with your own flair, ends up with the best results. Ships of all sizes and detail levels are right at your fingertips, and with unions and mesh imports, adding those trickier details is easier now than ever. Recently, one of the most pervasive users of the #faction_fanart channel has been Juszl, Vis of the Ninazu. He's been working on an entire fleet, weapons, structures for his faction for quite some time, with excellent results. Some of his posts can be seen below. But he doesn't just build a ship in one go - an important and interesting part of his posts is how he shows his process. From creating an outline of a ship based on some concept art, to filling it in using some pretty great plugins, to the final result. We've certainly enjoyed watching his development, and with his results, we'd recommend those just starting, take a lesson from his playbook. Another thing he does quite well is keeping a consistent theme between ships - they are all built by the same faction after all, so they should have some consistent elements. As seen in the fleet pictures, bold stripes can sharp edges are carried through his many ships, even if their shapes are wildly different. Another detail he has used is slight variation as seen below. Two ships of similar size but different purpose are the same ship chassis with a different format, which is an entirely reasonable thing for a faction to do. Drawing inspiration from things is great - there is so much content out there that no one has seen everything, and everyone's experiences are different. Find a style that fits you, and we'll work it into the game. We've also seen some other great stuff here and there that we'd like to spotlight here too. Be sure to post cool stuff you're making in the faction channel, to get some feedback from the community and devs, and to inspire others to make cool stuff themselves. RoVerse is more than just another spaceship flying game, it's a game for everybody in the faction community. Build your own ships, conquer the galaxy, show the world that you're more than an old base-raiding warclan. And most importantly, have fun doing it. Catch up with us next week for more progress on the Capital Update, as well as cool new builds and features for the full game! You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-first issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has seen continued development on the Capital Update with a few new features for Capitals, as well as some Datastore work for saving player data. Idyllic has been hard at work whenever he has free time to get the Capital Update rolling. In recent weeks, we've seen it grow from simple ship movement to having nearly all the features we've been designing for the past two years. This week, we've implemented a community suggestion, adding a toggle for the turret aim indicators... So in those situations that require fine-aiming, you can toggle on the indicators and blow enemy ships out of the sky, while remaining undistracted when you aren't in a heated conflict. Beyond that, he has been working on ship selection, which is currently in its rudimentary stages with a simple gui menu, but it allows ships to be dynamically loaded based on a selection, rather than a preset variable. Moving forward, he will be refining this feature, and adding in a process to customize the turret selection on these capital ships. When he needed a break from Capitals, Idyllic took the chance to implement the turret system onto some of the ground vehicles you may remember from a few newsletters back. Using the same system to set up the organization of the turret pieces, and attaching it to an anchor point on the vehicle, this test was a success. Get ready to shoot invading fighters out of the sky with this Anti-Air turret equipped Behemoth! Following this test, it was brought up that aiming in 3rd person from this vehicle was less than ideal - particularly when an obstruction behind the camera could be in conflict - so we made a few modifications... Including a turret-mounted camera for the driver, or potentially a second passenger acting as a gunner, to operate the weapons system. Now you can see the fighters entering atmo to bomb your outpost, and return fire as well! On Lordrex's end, there has been work done on using Datastores to save particular information, as well as work around the 260,000 character per entry limit. Rather than pay for an external server to handle absolutely everything coming from this game, we're making the best use of every feature we have available, and testing the limits to see just how far we can go. Using datastores to cache data relieves the strain on an external server, and helps cut down on those HTTP requests which are severely limited to begin with. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will faction cities be able to be made from a variety of different styles? Like a colony vs a capital? A1: If a faction has the developers to build that many different building types, we'll try our best to support features like that. There's definitely a benefit to immersion if a gleaming capital city looks different from a border system colony. Q2: Will there be anything special at the center of the galaxy? A2: Alpha Prime is at the center of the current sector that is available for exploration, and it does have some special rare resources found nowhere else, but there is nothing to say that the current map is the extent of the galaxy RoVerse takes place in. Who knows what mysteries lie beyond the edges of the map? Q3: Will there be giant ground vehicles to act as mobile ground bases during invasions? A3: Large sandcrawler-like vehicles are definitely on our wish list, and we'll try our best to make them happen. Ask us again closer to planets being done, they'd be a great addition to ground combat and invasion strategy, if a bit expensive. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-eighth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, lordrex has been designing the character creation data systems and menus that players will use when they first join the game, to create the personification of their RoVerse character, and Idyllic has continued work on Capital Ships, with some promising work on turret transit and aiming systems. Let's take a closer look! For RoVerse we wanted to blend the characters you use elsewhere on Roblox that are supported by a fairly limited set of options, with our own more expansive system that provides more options for customization - including the possibilities for custom meshes for different species both Dev created and faction created. To blend the two, we have been working on a system that will import pretty much the entirety of the Roblox Catalog into the game for use on your character. Assets sorted into categories you are familiar with, like hats, shirts, and pants, as well as some of our own design at some point in the future. Tacked onto this are more robust character options including the aforementioned custom meshes, as well as a wider variety of colors and adornments will be possible. The backend systems to support this aren't all that new - Catalog Heaven used catalog assets in-game particularly well, and the Roblox API's are readily available to grab asset ids - and the systems used to load these assets into the character creation screen aren't all that different from what you will encounter in-game when you visit shops at stations to further customize your character. It's important to look your best when terrorizing the starways. Idyllic recently picked up the task of working on Capital ship scripting for the upcoming Capital Update, and has been making steady progress for these past two weeks. Last week saw the ship movement systems, including strafing, pitching, yawing, and rolling on the global plane, this week he has continued work on these systems, including the addition of a vector lock toggle that maintains your current heading and speed, allowing you to move the camera about to aim your turrets. Contrary to the rudimentary system in the original Dogfight Alpha, this vector lock does not rotate your ship to upright, allowing it a more versatile use in combat. Upon testing it is clear that it is hard to tell when this function is enabled, so in the future we will be looking into visualizations to show the direction your ship is locked to, in addition to the HUD toggle readout. This feature added, he moved on to more important aspects of Capital control systems - turret transit. While the previous iterations of turrets worked as long as they were oriented upright, that didn't quite work for us in space, with its 3 dimensions. Using some advanced calculation methods helped along by inbuilt Roblox functions, Idyllic managed to get turrets to track the mouse position and turn to face it as closely as possible, with the turret at any orientation. This includes turrets mounted sideways like those on the front of the Avenger below, as well as those mounted to the bottom, or any angle in-between. Another aspect of importance is the modular aspect of the turrets - a hardpoint on the ship model, and a matching hardpoint on the turret model makes adding and interchanging turret models a breeze, as well as a standardized grouping format of the turret parts should allow us to easily change between any variation of the model imaginable, whether it's developer created or created by a faction. We'll be releasing the final details in a few weeks, so you can get your devs working on custom faction turret models! Here you see the turrets independently pointing at the cursor, as close as is possible on their axis. Also included in this code is the groundwork for weapon groups, so you can turn on and off sets of turrets for various situations - turning on left or right groups of turrets if you happen to get flanked, for example. Moving forward, Idyllic will be taking on the task of turret firing, of all the various projectiles we have prepared for every weapon type, as well as beginning to interchange some of the turret models and effects to test how well the system works. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will fighter-ground vehicle hybrids be possible? A1: While a combination fighter-mech would be cool, I'm not certain how reasonable it would be to make nor use one. In the end, it'd have to be debuffed as both a fighter and a mech, making it worse at everything than two separate vehicles would be. If there is enough interest we could possibly add it in at a later point, but until then you would probably be best off with a fighter large enough to carry a dedicated mech you could jump into when you've landed on a planet. Q2: Will cities have to be filled with skyscrapers? Will dead cities leave ruins? Could I build a bunker in the ruins? A2: Actually, no. If your faction theme is better suited with low-rise structures or other shorter buildings, you can design them like that, it's up to you. Dead cities will leave ruins as a marker of the history of the place, to add exploration interest, allow factions to rebuild their cities, and to retain more history than anything in the clan world can currently. Imagine walking among the ruins of a capital of a faction that died out years ago. If you're looking to build a small structure in a city, a base is the way to go, rather than building an entire city. Q3: How will sieges on cities work? A3: City sieges will be live-fire against whoever is there to defend, with any reinforcements you bring along. Attacking a city will be straightforward, involving shooting everything, but will be tempered by a large health pool. Defenders should also be able to conduct repairs, so your invasion force should be sure to take out any incoming cargo ships bringing resources. Q4: Will ringed planets be textured planes, or will the rings be made of real junk? A4: Since one of our primary goals is avoiding the shortcomings of previous space games, it just wouldn't be right of us to take the easy way out for planetary rings. I would expect that at a long distance, the rings will appear as a textured plane or two, while up close there should be detritus to mine, or avoid crashing into on approach. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-seventh issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we have an update on the status of the Capital Update, some more planet work from Idyllic, and some more backend development and documentation from lordrex. Idyllic wrapped up this week solving a few more planetary generation problems, with continued work on moisture distribution. While some generation systems just randomly place biomes wherever they want (looking at you, minecraft), we weren't happy with that process. Instead, we opted for a relatively simple process that generates moisture for every 'tile' on a planet based on whether its land or water, then in a few cycles, moves that moisture around. Using the wind vectors we set up, water moves over land, dropping out as it goes, with more dropping when obstacles like mountain ranges are encountered. This creates realistic rain-shadows behind mountains where deserts are more likely to form. Desert biomes will be dry because they don't have consistent access to water, not because a random point generator picked a spot. It also takes into consideration the heat factor we've generated - the poles will be cold and snow-covered with little precipitation, while mountain valleys with the right shape and direction will collect excess water, forming rainforest or swamp biomes. And with continued work, each of these biomes should end up with unique foliage forms suited to their stats, to better immerse the player in the planet surface gameplay. While some may say that working on such complex planets isn't worth the effort, we don't agree. The exciting gameplay experiences possible with planetary invasions, or exploration of the four corners of the galaxy, pushes this game beyond the arcade shooters that have come before. Lordrex has continued his work on backend systems as well as the design of the finer details of faction interaction. This week, we've ironed out the details of how a faction leader will go about running their faction, from how they use an expanded galaxy map, to what information will be available on that map, to how they can orchestrate raids and battles from a central command point with their HRs. Along with this came further discussion about how faction conflicts will be run, and we believe we've settled on a compromise solution that solves the problems we have identified with faction warfare, as well as allowing players to attack anytime, anywhere. In other words - no set battle times restricting participation. Further details will be released at a future time. Many of you may be wondering about the status of the Capital Update. We are working hard on catching up on the 3 months of work that we lost when craft left the team, but progress is slow because of the school year. Our dedicated team is doing the best they can, and we'll be continuing to provide updates as we go. Of note this week, Capital ship movement has been refined from NoCollider's Demo, with some added features like collision detection. Idyllic has also begun to help out with Capital Development, to speed up the process. We should be seeing promising results in no time. The two gifs here are comprised of a total of 1 day of work on the refurbished system - Capitals aren't all that complicated on their own, but the most challenging features are replication, and collision detection with minuscule fighters. Also of note is a simplification of the process of setting up Capital ships for easy implementation. As long as the model has a core part and a bounding box, it should be able to fly. Prior systems, including the original Dogfight Alpha were very poorly set up to accept different ship models and turret models, which we had to re-write for the Capital Update, which was well worth the time we put into refurbishing that part of the system. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: How will borders work? A1: While we could implement a system that bars people from flying into your systems automatically, that really wouldn't be in the spirit of giving Factions a realistic playing field on which they can do as they please. If a faction want's to secure its borders, it'll have to hire security forces, or recruit members to patrol these territories, and should consider the extra area to cover before invading every system they can - if they can't defend their territory, they won't hold it for long. Q2: Will there be HIGHSEC or similar? A2: Continuing from the above question, the security of systems will be up to the owning factions. There won't be an automated law system anywhere, because factions can have their own set of rules, which they are free to enforce. While we will rank systems based on their hostility towards new players for initial spawning purposes, there will be no interference by us in how players act. Q3: Will we be able to keep systems independent from faction control? A3: With the newly decided details of Faction and Subfaction abilities, it is likely that this will be possible - if enough people residing in a system want to keep faction influences out, they should be able to attack any faction installations that try to be assembled, whether that means that individuals or organizations keep the entire system free, or just a planet surface, is entirely up to them. Drawing inspiration from the Browncoats of Firefly, or the Hutts of Star Wars, there is a wide range of possibilities for uncontrolled systems. Each planet acting entirely independent from one another, or whole systems run by a powerful mob boss, the possibilities are pretty cool to think about. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventy-sixth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas this past week, and were able to relax for at least a little bit. We've had a busy week around here as well, but we made the most of the free time we have, and some of the boring time while family is around, to work on some pretty cool, and very important features for the game. This week, the development team working on the Capital Update has continued to work hard on finishing everything we will need. When we were trying to rush to release by Christmas, we ended up shelving a few features that we wanted but would take to much time, but now that we missed that original deadline, we can reconsider. And some of those features were pretty vital to extended gameplay, so putting them back in should make the game that much more fun to play. Idyllic finally took on the monumental task of digitizing and organizing the star systems that were designed nearly a year and a half ago, putting them into a handy google sheets database that we can use to manage and keep track of the status of systems, as well as one very important feature - loading the layout of systems from a saved and packed data file. Because the system we have planned uses a trick to create the different star systems, planets, and station servers, we need a way to load that information in, so when a new server is created, it has the most up-to-date and accurate information with which to build the system layout. Rather than have 800 individual place files all in one gigantic universe, our servers will come in about four different flavors, and upon creation, load in the instructed location from an outside source, create the star and its asteroids, the minerals in the debris, any station locations and planets. After the success of organizing the star system data, Idyllic took on the grueling process of not only organizing, but completely creating a list of every planet in the galaxy. With some fancy formulas and a few mistakes, he created an ordered list of all 539 planets to be generated, each with a connection to its host system. Each of these lists includes the necessary information to generate the right biome and size and any other information needed, making it a huge step in getting the game to production. With this work on the database, he also took on the task of giving the galaxy map a facelift, as well as making it load from an external source, rather than a list of systems as originally designed. With the new database of information, he was able to create a much more informative map than was previously possible, with star types and sizes, planets and their orbital radius, and asteroid field biomes. You may remember the old galaxy map. While it served its purpose of organizing the systems of the Galaxy into capturable sectors, it really wasn't prettiest design, and it wasn't the most useful. And for something greeting every player in the lobby server, the galaxy map needs to be both those things. And so Idyllic teamed up with Vedrakkerous, to bring new life to the map. We know that many computers don't handle particles exceptionally well, so keep in mind that these features will be toggleable by the user to better fit their computer's capabilities, including turning down particles, not rendering system biome asteroids, and even as far as turning off planets, to cut down on the part count, which admittedly got a bit high. The map features LightInfluence particles that we can use to show the different sectors of the galaxy, like the Badlands or the Misty Reaches, as well as a toggle to show faction control of systems. Flying through the galaxy really is an amazing experience. With this exceptional progress this week, and future plans to digitize the rest of the pre-planned data that has been sitting around, Idyllic should be pushing progress on the game forward in huge steps in the coming week. This week, Skinny was too busy with real life to make any substantial progress on the ships he's been working on, but he did manage to successfully create a proof-of-concept for planetary atmospheres, simulating that blueish outline visible at a distance, that also falls into shadow behind it, as it should. Add in a lovely generated planet mesh, and fleets will be cruising to invade in no time! This week we have also hired on a new shipbuilder, Lorenzo, and he has already done some amazing work with a particularly unique example for this week. Shaped unlike any other capitals in our fleet, and with more room for armor than weapon emplacements, this Medium Capital should work wonders securing systems and holding the line, while reinforcements can be called in. Welcome to the team! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will a religious faction be allowed in? A1: While we have had many factions discuss their plans in the community about including a religion in their lore, which is entirely acceptable, creating a faction based on a real-life religion would not be allowed. While you may be able to get away with a 'Space Templars' faction, don't expect to use RoVerse to go proselytizing. Q2: What type of machines can we expect for mining into the planet, will we have an ‘unlimited’ inventory to hold the ores or will you put it in a container? A2: Mining on planets is still in the design phase, but it won't be all that different from mining asteroids with a dedicated mining ship. We plan to include mining lasers as possible attachments to vehicles, for fast and rough mining, as well as mining on foot that might get you a bit more efficiency, into harder-to-reach places, but be a bit slower to operate. As for digging in to planets, you should expect only minimal changes to terrain, not significant mining tunnels or the like, at least at release. This isn't quite minecraft after all. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite!
Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventy-fifth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.
This week, our shipbuilders have been hard at work, the rest of our builders have been working on Capital Alpha maps, and the scripters have been hard at work on finishing up the Capital Update. We really wanted to get it out by Christmas, but we also hold fast to our convictions to only release things when they are absolutely ready to go. And since this isn't a race, we'll be putting in the extra effort to complete the Capital Alpha Update as soon and as perfect as possible. In the meantime, we're hosting a Tournament at the original Dogfight Alpha to find the best pilot in the galaxy. You may have seen the signup link in the last few newsletters, and signups have officially closed for the 2v2 tournament. Keep an eye on the Community Discord channel for the official Tournament Bracket to be released, and the competitions will be happening over the next few weeks. First up on the progress this week is the report from Skinny. He's been doing the initial designs for a new ship, as well as continued modifications to a nice environmental script he's been tweaking. He's also completed the meshing of the cargo ship displayed last week, with it cut into 23 colored and separated parts. We can't wait to see the next ship he is working on! Sae'tzar has been hard at work, this week finishing up a ship that has been sitting in the dry docks for a while now. This large ship is designed with a large hangar capacity in mind, with two large superstructures protruding from the side of the main body.
Classed as an XL Capital, and with a volume of 277k, this ship is a rather small ship for the class, but built to handle a ton of firepower. Expect to see this Titan in battle deploying fleets of fighters to take out enemy installations, while providing its own support from the numerous turrets lining its hull.
We'd like to welcome CraftSmashBuild to the team, he's taken up finalizing and improving the operation of Capital ships in anticipation of the Capital Update. He's made some astounding progress in just the few days he's been with us, and we can't wait to see the amazing work he makes moving forward. You can see a rough video of some improvements he's made, including a roll functionality that was glossed over in the previous version. Another special treat this week from Animula, releasing another sample of the soundtracks we're developing to make flying around the RoVerse Galaxy that much more immersive. This time, its a sampling of an ambient track, for when you find yourself cruising the void of oblivion all alone. You can check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/animula_musicdev/on-metal-wings?in=animula_musicdev/sets/roverse-original-soundtrack Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Should ships being built by factions include landing gear? A1: Ideally, yes. Smaller craft, like any fighter, cargo carrier, or mining ship will be able to enter atmosphere and land on the ground. Larger ships, like Small, Medium, and Large Capitals may be able to enter atmosphere, but will have limited abilities when it comes to landing. So built-in landing gear of any faction style would be recommended. Q2: How will transferring between ships and stations or other ships work if there aren't interiors for everything? A2: For ship to ship movement, we're looking at a simple system of transferring the player automatically from ship to ship, with the camera moving between the two. There may be some sort of integrated delay, but nothing substantial. Ideally, moving between two ships wouldn't involve moving into the ship interior place, which is hosted in a separate server, walking down corridors and using hyperlifts, only to rejoin the original server in another ship, that just makes things too complicated, and less likely to work most of the time. For ship to station transfers, the station interior is the destination, so having the player transfer servers once, is a much better experience. Either through a docking arm connecting to a large ship, or a shuttle ferrying them into a hangar, ship to station transfers should be painless, as well as realistic. Q3: Would there be options to utilize space mines in order to lock down an area, or to assist in a defensive line around a planet, station, or area of interest? A3: Mines have been a planned mechanic since we first demoed fighters releasing them quite a few newsletters ago. On the logistical end, fighter-deployed mines would be better suited for fighter v fighter engagements, with the proper sized explosion to do quite a bit of damage. When it comes to Capital ships, though, a larger mine would be needed, probably by another capital ship, to do any sort of measurable damage. And we may be able to make them persist, at least for a while, to help with security, but we don't want them to be too powerful that you just jam 100 into a jump gate and taking out an entire fleet. Q4: What about mines attached to asteroids, or cloaked? A4: This is an interesting suggestion. Mines aren't just depth charges set adrift, being able to lock mines to locations, to protect mineral resource points, or just to hide a larger explosive next to a large rock, could be an interesting addition to using mines in warfare. Q5: Do developers get dental? A5: Only if they qualify as full-time workers and have worked 1,254 hours in the last calendar year. Q6: How will carriers work? A6: As answered several times before, prior to battle capitals can load up with a bunch of fighters, each 'stored' in the capitals hangar capacity. As players die and respawn in these fighters, the counts of available ships reduce. Since putting an actual hangar cut into the side of a moving ship isn't feasible, ships spawning from a capital hangar will spawn alongside the larger ships. Q7: Does galactic insurance cover space turkey related injuries? A7: I believe they will class such occasions as an 'act of god' and refuse to pay out for it. Q8: What are the concepts for land based weapons looking like? Bullet drop? Max ranges? Specific types of weapons, IE; Beam laser sniper rifles? Will we be able to make as many infantry weapons as we please? Will vehicles be practically impervious to infantry based weaponry? A8: A lot of questions in one there. Planetary combat is still in the planning phases, but we have a pretty solid foundation set out for it. It will be a mix of infantry, land-bound vehicles, and spacecraft, with each being afforded benefits that make them a requirement for a successful planetary campaign. Handheld weapons should have the same typing as fighter and capital weapons, from autolasers to plasma launchers to kinetic and explosive weaponry. There won't be any hard limits to the number of faction weaponry, only that the amount of work required of the developers to import such weapons be kept in mind, so keep it to a reasonable number. As anyone who knows anything about tank warfare in WWII, having an armored vehicle is a great plus, but they are by no means invincible. A well-laid landmine, or a rocket-propelled grenade in the right place will blow a hole through just about anything. From all of us here on the Development team, we wish you a Merry Christmas!
alexi says hi
You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Any fans of the science fiction genre on Roblox can join the Science Fiction Genre Discord and find other fans and developers like you. Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventy-fourth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has been quite busy, with lots more progress and a few tweaks to the Capital Update, some new ships from our shipbuilders, and a progress update on planet generation. Let's get started! Skinny has been working on his new cargo ship for the past few weeks, and it has finally gotten to a point he considers ready for flight. This truly massive cargo-carrying ship will be able to transport as much cargo as a faction could ever want, across as many star systems as they need to get the best price for the contents. With a unique style that doesn't match any other ships designed yet, this ship will truly stand out in your fleet. And we can't wait to see what he creates next. The Capital Update has seen some very important progress, with the first implementation of ship switching, as well as the first few steps towards customizable weapon loadouts. With the way the original dogfight alpha was coded, and the way the scripters handed work over to each other, caused it to become ungainly and very, very hard to modify. So the fact that we've been able to pull it apart and set it up the way it should have originally been set up, if a monumental achievement. We can't wait to show you how awesome this game is, and how much fun it is to fly around. But for now, you'll just have to take my word for it. Also from our shipbuilders, Sae'Tzar has built two new capital ships, the Bard class and the Guardian class, Medium and Small Capital, respectively. Matching the style of his previous ships, these capitals expand the line available from the manufacturer Wolf's Shipyard, and he has plenty more in the planning and early production phases. Mikey has completed another set of icons, this time the Capital Ship Icons. Each size class has a different icon, telling you at a glance exactly what ships are in your area. It's been quite a while since we've talked about where planets are at, as our focus is mainly on the Capital Update at the moment. But that doesn't mean we haven't been working on all the other cool features we've been working on. Planets have been in a sort of transition phase, as Idyllic transfers the inefficient generation system into a much more efficient, purely script-based implementation that doesn't rely on lists of objects holding data. This, of course, means that very complicated table structures have to be developed to hold all the information needed to generate planets. Currently, that means restructuring the continent growing system to select close neighbors from a table, rather than a part in workspace. And the work is going well, with everything on track to be completed before release. So stay tuned for updates from Idyllic's project! This is just about your last chance to sign up for the Dogfight Alpha Tournament. Sign up with a team of your friends and prove who's the best pilot in the galaxy. You can find the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17KKApFQwTK-EW0uWbNQlWvq0i7OXem1Hf4YVh4SVOn4/viewform?edit_requested=true We should be announcing the date or dates of the battle soon, so don't wait too long! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: What are the planned differences between ships that use only hull shielding, vs ships that use hull and ray shields? A1: If a ship is to rely on hull shielding, it would ideally have a much higher hull health stat than a comparable ship that uses both types of shielding. The major difference, between a ship with equal health, would be the thickness of the armor, cutting into interior cargo space, along with the weaknesses and strengths of different weapon types. Unfortunately, this week there weren't too many questions that hadn't been answered before. You can find quite a few of these questions on the FAQ page. If you have any questions not answered, feel free to ask them in our discord Community Channel. See you next week! You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Any fans of the science fiction genre on Roblox can join the Science Fiction Genre Discord and find other fans and developers like you. Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |